Lewis spits again.
“Welcome to the club, buddy,” he says.
The more I see her, the more I think it’s unfair that she’s
scared of me, and this makes me pissed off, and then I think
about it some more, and then I decide—
Sergeant Ruiz peeks into the classroom through the window set in the door and sees Third Squad sprawled asleep on top of their fartsacks where they’d been billeted, surrounded by leftovers from rapidly devoured MREs. One of them cries out in his sleep, making the others stop snoring long enough to frown and twitch for a few moments.
Again he thinks about his young wife and infant son in Jacksonville, Florida. Should he try to call her now?
What if she doesn’t answer the phone?
Would he go over the hill and try to get home to his family, like Richard Boyd?
Maybe, but look where that got Boyd. The LT said half his face got bitten off and he’d been transformed into a Mad Dog.
He hears footsteps, turns and sees 2LT Greg Bishop approaching from the end of the hallway, gesturing angrily at his trailing NCOs. Probably complaining again about Bowman’s order to McGraw to shoot down all those civilians. Said it was inhuman, even with the ROE. Said Bowman doesn’t deserve to take command of what’s left of Charlie Company. Said even some Nazis during WWII refused to follow orders and participate in wholesale slaughter.
Ruiz shakes his head in disgust and resumes his own walk to the gym, where a thousand people lie moaning and dying on cots arranged in nice, neat rows. Healthy civilians are moving among them changing sheets and bedpans and IV bags, supervised by three hapless, red-faced corpsmen and a handful of nurses from the day shift who made it to work. Others are disposing of corpses and disinfecting the area with mops and rags. The LT told them: We have food, water, blankets. We can protect you, feed you and shelter you. But if you stay, you work. And you work hard.
It is unpleasant labor, and there is plenty of shirking, but many of the civilians are happy to have something to do to take their minds off their problems. The ones who are working are the toughest, the ones you can count on. The others just can’t take what’s happening to them and their world. They quickly wandered off and nobody has seen them since. Many of these people have lost everything, and it was torn away bloodily in front of their very eyes. They are in shock, and many of them will never snap out of it.
It was a good idea, in any case, to give the civilians something to do. The LT is smart for an officer, Ruiz thinks. If Bowman commanded the way Bishop says he should, First Platoon would still be trapped in that classroom, under siege and starving by inches, and Second Platoon would have been scattered to the winds on Forty-Second Street.
Ruiz likes to make things simple. Here is how he sees it:
Bowman is working hard and doing what it takes to keep his boys alive.
Bishop is a douche and is complaining instead of working.
And Knight, well, word is some of his own guys want to frag his ass. Word is that when the Mad Dogs came out of the woodwork and started ripping his boys to shreds, he refused to fire, and instead told them to run for it.
Ruiz shakes his head. The reality on the ground has changed, and if we do not change with it, we will die. Those who cannot accept reality, as it is, should not command. Bishop, for example, believes Bowman should have called in units equipped with riot control gear and captured the Mad Dogs nonviolently.
The man is either insane or in denial about their predicament.
That leaves Bowman as the ideal man for the job as the guy least likely to get them all killed within the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours.
Ruiz sees a few civilians patrolling the gym, toting M4 carbines. He exchanges a nod with one of them, a middle-aged marine with experience in Panama and the first Gulf War. Another one of Bowman’s innovations— arming those civilian volunteers having prior military experience with Charlie Company’s spare carbines. They are now Bowman’s police force, used to make sure none of the Lyssa patients goes Mad Dog and makes trouble, while giving the rest of the civilians somebody to complain to besides the soldiers.
Bowman said he is not interested in a humanitarian mission. He is trying to keep Charlie Company combat effective. He is looking at this place as hostile territory and the Mad Dogs as enemy combatants, the way he was told to do by the Brass. The guys in the rear with the gear are not right very often, but on this, they are absolutely goddamn correct.
Ruiz walks down a row of Lyssa victims lying in their cots, looking into each face. Most are in bad shape, as the Mad Dogs showed a preference for spreading infection to those lying in their beds who were closest to recovery. But a few smile back at him.
There is hope in this place. It makes him feel good. They are doing some good here. The LT said there’s plenty of supplies, including ammunition, and a lot of sick people to protect and help recover.
He also said not to get too comfortable.
If Charlie Company moves, Ruiz wonders, should I try to leave?
How would I get home?
Does it matter? If what Bowman said about Boyd is true, then the Mad Dogs are going to try to wipe this planet clean of human life. Maybe one out of twenty is now a Mad Dog, and they are already bringing the country to its knees.
The rate of infection is unbelievable.
It is a horrible thought, but our only hope of stalling the Apocalypse, he thinks, is that the Mad Dogs kill a lot more people than they infect, reducing the rate of infection. If the infection rate is arithmetical instead of exponential, they might have a chance at stopping them through brute extermination. The way the Iraqis were doing it just before Charlie was sent home. (It is strange to think that the countries most likely to pull through this are failed states with brutal societies and lots of guns and ammo.)
In any case, if America is doomed, why should he stay? Why not at least try to get to Janisa and Emmanuel? In a contest between his family and his platoon, there would be no contest. If his love for his wife is passionate, his love for his son is primordial. He would, in fact, saw off his own arm for his kid. He would systematically kill all of his comrades. His true duty in a crisis like this, at the end of the world, lies with his family.
The only problem is he is here and they are there, and he would die before he could reach them.
A young woman hurries by, her dark eyes wide with alarm. Doc Waters, exhausted and in a fine rage now, shouts after her to bring back as much amantadine—a generic antiviral drug—as she can carry.
Even with the mask, Ruiz can tell that the girl is pretty, just like his Janisa. The idea that his wife and son are in danger fills him with grief.
He will try to call her. But first he has to check on one of his boys.
Hawkeye has been tied down to his cot with restraining belts, sweating and reeking, the bandage on his cheek stained a rusty brown, his throat beginning to swell into a mass of golf ball-sized buboes. He tries to smile upon seeing Ruiz, but the smile quickly morphs into a grimace, his skin the sickly gray color characteristic of infection.
“How are you, Hawkeye?”
“Been better, Sergeant,” he rasps, his voice underscored with a vibration that occasionally culminates in a growl when he exhales. “You come to help me?”
“I brought an extra pillow for you, like you asked.”
“I can’t swallow. I’m goddamn thirsty all the time but I can’t stand even looking at water. Just seeing an IV bag pisses me off. I’m pissed off all the time.”
“It’s unfair, Hawkeye.”
“No,” Hawkeye hisses. “It’s the germs. They’re making me pissed off. They’re putting thoughts into my head. You see that pretty girl who just walked by? The one with the big black eyes you could fall into?”
“She just walked by here,” Ruiz says. “Sure, I saw her.”
